


Martyrdom

by hello_imasalesman



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:21:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4250889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_imasalesman/pseuds/hello_imasalesman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Boss and Gat grieve in different ways. Takes place during Saints Row 2. Very faint Boss/Gat if you squint, can also be read as gen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Martyrdom

He can’t visit Johnny; he wants to, of course. But one of the few pitfalls of organized crime was gathering multiple lieutenants in a public place was a near death sentence. Sick beds, funerals, weddings; generally sacred places were safe no more. He barely lingered when he wheeled Johnny in, his eyes swiveling over the questionably testy gaze of a hospital security guard. Visiting Johnny, who was surely recovering in a pair of cuffs, was out of the question. He’s not sure if Troy has the place under surveillance—the man was strangely benevolent towards his ex-fellow members, which both infuriated and calmed the Boss—but he doesn’t want to test it.  The general members are already uneasy about Johnny, the second-in-command, being laid up. His own incarceration would spell the death of the gang.

And if there was one thing that kept him going, it was the continuation of the Third Street Saints. He _had_ to keep it going. _He had to_. There had never been any question of joining another gang, of rolling over tender belly-side up to let Maero stick him like a pig with his twenty percent share. That was _bullshit_. 

He sends other members to see Johnny. _He’s ok, I guess,_ they would say, or _he’s chained to the hospital bed, but he’s breathing._ He doesn’t call him. He doesn’t directly interact. At some point, they’re going to have to bail him out, given the man was supposed to be sentenced to the chair the last time the state had a hold on him. At some point, they’re going to have to bury Aisha. He’s had her body prepared; she has a will, of course, but he’s not sure how the hell they’re going to bury a decapitation. Closed casket. He’s going to murder all of the Ronin. Aisha didn’t deserve a closed casket.

The Boss is nervous. Agitated. Aggressive. The next member he sends to Johnny, the woman can’t describe as well as he wants of how Johnny looks, if he seemed agitated, did he say anything, how was he healing up? And he throws a beer bottle at her head, and Shaundi has to drag boss backwards as Pierce swoops in to pull her off to one of the less nasty corners of their construction sight of a hangout to help the poor member who’s sobbing with pain from the shards in her cheek. Shaundi holds out her hands and the Boss paces around like a caged tiger. There’s nothing they can do. They wait.

 

They’re drinking. Probably, too soon; he’s not sure if Johnny should be drinking this soon after his hospital break out, if there’s any medication interaction that will wreck the man.

“Who cares,” Johnny says, in his usual blustery nonchalance, but it’s wound too tight. Too tight. He’s strained. And who wouldn’t be.

The Boss feels his brain swimming in the sludge Johnny called whiskey, which was fetched by a member from a nearby gas station. It’s cheap and burns like gasoline; he swears it might be, and he almost barked at the underling to grab them something better (they were the leaders, for fucks sake, this was mourning alcohol-) but Johnny grinned, muttered a thanks and sent the guy on his way.

So they’re drinking. Him, and Johnny. They don’t say much. Hell, they don’t even look at each other much. It’s just the two of them, taking short sips until the burn goes away and they can take longer sips, enjoying each other’s presence in the shallowest of senses. Just another body to appease the aching loneliness grief wrecks on a mind. Just somebody, a body sitting there, so Johnny has a reason to keep his emotions in check. (But, it could have only ever been the Boss. Because if he can’t manage to keep himself in check, if he breaks down, the Boss will not say a word. He’ll placate but not coddle.) When his glass empties, the Boss fills it back up, accidentally sloshing some onto the coffee table between them. 

Later, when they’re drunk enough, they’ll drag the table and their glasses out to the underbelly of the club, where a few homeless still linger. They’ll smash the table to pieces, light it on fire, and throw their glasses, splintering into sharp shards, into the mix.  The next day Carlos finds them collapsed under a tarp, and he fetches them energy drinks and water and Freckle Bitch’s breakfast sandwiches. He’s a good Lieutenant.

 

Thunder rumbles outside; Johnny is in the office of Purgatory, going through the gun cache and making sure everything was clean. He doesn’t go home anymore; he did, at one point, after the funeral to collect some of his things. Just some, like a child going over a friend’s house for a sleepover. He’s been sleeping in the room the Boss had kept for himself. The man has other homes throughout Stilwater; he’s told Johnny, multiple times, he doesn’t care. Move all of your shit in. It’s _your_ place, Johnny, just as much as mine.

Even as far underground as the club is, he can hear the thunder. It’s loud; it must be deafening above. He also hears doors crashing open. Johnny looks up from the Krukov, his eyes trailing over the walls toward where the sound is coming from beyond. Slowly, he places the cleaning cloth down, pushes the chamber in with a solid click. He triggers the safety off. There’s shouting.

The door bursts open and Johnny nearly pulls the trigger, only to see The Boss’s form. He looks like a drowned rat, and there’s blood soaking the front of his wifebeater, smeared across the front of his sweatpants. It’s not his.

It’s not that the Boss has ever regretted being a Saint. He’s never regretted becoming second-in-command, and then post-coma, ascending upwards from playa. This revival was all he had left, really. But there’s regret, radiating out of him, for the death of his friends. It was different with Lin; he was only a member, a Lieutenant, he wasn’t in charge—things were supposed to be _different_ —

 

Shovels tamp the ground. Johnny throws another bit of dirt on top of it, but the coffin is good and truly buried six feet under; if he was the squeamish type, the thought of Shogo scratching his nails until they were bloody stumps against the wood of the coffin, gasping as the air became thinner and thinner would bother him.

He’s not, though. He’s pretty fucking _pleased_ with himself, if he could be completely honest, but it’s a hollow feeling. He hits the ground, a bit harder, just hitting the shovel against it. He wonders if Shogo can distantly hear the noise. The hand on the back of his neck makes him jump; The Boss squeezes, firm and familiar.

He shakes his hand off. The Boss retreats without a word.

Johnny finds himself at one of the Saint’s cribs. Any will do. He’s not going back home in the suburbs, that’s for sure. Any of the cribs will do; he doesn’t remember driving. He lets himself in. There’s a few other members, and a few strippers. He doesn’t ask them to leave, he just asks where the liquor cabinet is. Everyone is quiet; everyone is walking on eggshells.

Johnny’s too exhausted to tell them to scram, and in a way, it’s soothing background noise as he sinks bonelessly into a couch none of the other members dare to sit on once he claims. There must be an aura of despair around him so thick even the strippers don’t bother him; or, maybe it’s the way he’s knocking back drink after drink, or the scent of fresh dirt and the stench of death underneath his shoes, or the faint blood stains on the tie he’s loosened from his neck.

He falls asleep in the blue glow of the obnoxiously large television and the dull buzz of a few members talking in the kitchen. He dreams of Eesh. She is beautiful, and warm in his arms, and he presses his face against her neck to smell her perfume and make her shriek with laughter when he starts to press kisses there. When his lips touch her skin, he feels wetness. He pulls back. There’s blood—on her neck, on his lip now, and she’s falling apart in his arms, like some fucked-up marionette with too-loose strings.

He wakes up his shoulders vigorously shaking. He lashes out, only realizing as his fist connects with the strong jaw in front of him that it’s the Boss; the man’s tough, but he hadn’t been expecting it, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes. He groans, something about “My fuckin’ nose, what the hell are your knuckles _made of_ ,”

Johnny apologizes. It strikes him, suddenly, that he’s never made the Boss bleed before, ever since canonization. That was different. Blood in, blood out. Once you were canonized, you had ascended. You were a Saint. Saints did not strike each other; those who did, like Julius, like Dex, like Troy—they deserved special places in Hell. He stands, groggy from sleep and still mildly drunk, and with some of the Boss’ help collects the other off the floor. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the other man shakily wipes his face, fingers sliding up slightly underneath his glasses and his knuckles bumping them askew. He mutters something about being real sorry that he fucked up the Boss’ nose. The other man’s smile is thin. 

Johnny can’t hold himself together. He doesn’t know what to say other than _sorry_ , _playa_ , as he sobs into his chest.

 

The Boss doesn’t grieve like Johnny does. After immediately coming back the night of the killing, he stews by himself for a bit. Pierce tries to find any still existing members of the Mendoza family; his brother, who was a member of the Saints when it was run by Julius, is long dead. They can’t find or reach his father, and the Boss knows from talking with him that his mother was rotting in a loa dust den somewhere.

It’s strange. The Boss never talks directly to Troy and Troy never talks directly to the Boss, and yet, they somehow get the body back. It’s not as if it could have been anything but closed casket, so they cremate him. The Boss doesn’t talk for a week. Johnny lets him go; he knows, like how he did (still does) with Aisha, he will come around in time if he needs any comfort.

Everyone hears about the Bank hostage almost soon as it happens, given that there is always one radio on the police scanner and the other on KRhyme. They even interrupt the radio to start covering it, and that’s when the members shut the fuck up and turn the volume up. Pierce shushes a stripper whose heels are clacking too loudly on the podium; _though he is wearing his hood up to obfuscate his features, those on the scene are calling in to report that the man is the leader of the Third Street Saints; what he wants with this woman at this moment is unclear, but the bank is currently at a standstill._

The police blotter is buzzing more frantically than Jane Valderamma; Johnny can pick out the words _possible gang affiliation_ , but they can’t be talking about Boss, can they? He’s not possible, he’s confirmed—there’s a ruckus upstairs, and Pierce turns to violently shush whoever is stomping their way across but his words die when Shaundi appears, flushed and out of breath. “It’s _Jessica_. He got her—holy shit, guys, he got that bitch that scraped Carlos.”

Pierce has to correct her, say that he’s getting her, not got, they’re still in the process. Johnny leans back, and turns the radio up to make a point. They need to shut up, a few cops won’t hold the Boss back. 

A few cops didn’t hold them back. Reports that he broke out of the bank, with a few well-placed bullets and Jessica as a human shield the Ultor-sponsored police and FBI were suspiciously hesitant to shoot—and they were out. 

There was a police chase. Shaundi takes the lull to explain what happened, rolling a joint on the table between them like she’s automated; how she had seen Maero’s girlfriend enter the bank, how she had called him up thinking that if anyone could think of a plan right away, it was the Boss. She lights up, and passes it to Pierce, who takes one puff too many before Gat punches him in the shoulder and he passes it on with a whine. The police have lost The Boss. Radio silence. The police search, but can’t find a thing. When it’s become clear that he’s not arriving back here with her, the other gang members start to filter out from where the radio is to do other things.

They finish the first joint, and Shaundi rolls a few more. By the time the Boss comes back, Pierce is staring at his fingers muttering about the beauty of the human body, and Shaundi’s giving their comically large take out order to a lower-level member to retrieve for them from Company of Gyros. There’s no blood on the Boss this time. Gat smiles and stands, and they give each other a side hug, shoulders bumping, thumping each other on the back. He adds a gyro to the order, sits next to Pierce, and nabs the roach smoldering in the ash tray.

If Gat hadn’t known him for so long, he would have sworn Boss was okay.

 

There’s a deadened look to the Boss’ eyes, who’s smoking outside of his bedroom. After everything that had happened with Aisha and Carlos, when Johnny gestures hesitantly to a very quiet and bruised Shaundi taking refuge in the hideout bedroom, Boss almost laughs with relief when he says, “It was just a kidnapping.” He had saved this one. He hadn’t let this one die; and, God, did he see Shaundi’s life flash before him when that skinny dreadlocked fuck dragged her prone body up the stairs with a pistol shaking in his hands. 

She’s not great. She’s shaken up, she’s got a few bruises from where he held her so hard. Her pride’s wounded, and she’s never felt so unguarded, not since joining the Saints, at least. But fuck it, she’s alive. She made it back home.

Pierce suddenly barrels through the elevator, and pushes past the two of them standing by the open doorway. Shaundi only has time to glance up before he is hugging her fiercely, much to her chagrin. She’s yelling, “I’m fine, you dumbass! Get off me or pack me a bowl at least or something.” But all Pierce does is loosen his grip, refusing to let her go. She’s like the vulnerability of a little sister and the biting domineering of an older one all mixed together—if she had gotten _hurt_ —

They leave the kids to their thing. The Boss is smiling; at this moment, he is strangely vilified and lifted up. He’s saved one of his saints from martyrdom. Johnny slings an arm around his shoulder, and the Boss does the same. They’re not good, they’re not okay. But maybe, they’re getting somewhere.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. :) If you enjoy my writing please check out headcanons too short to publish over at my tumblr hello-imasalesman.


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